Thursday, October 20, 2011

Virtual Libraries – Part 1

Like most people who spend a lot of time
on-line, I have strong opinions about what I find. Vicious gossip sites and forums for unfounded
political attacks? Bad. Information on recycling days? Good. Restaurant reviews
for the new Thai place up the street? Excellent. Free access to thousands of
books in the public domain? Incredible.

While I’ve known about Project Gutenberg for a while, I’ve spent very little time on the site until
recently. Now just one of an ever-growing
number of sites that serve as a portal to works in the public domain, Project
Gutenberg was one of the first. Founded in 1971 by Michael Hart, then a student
at the University of Illinois, the site now offers 36,000 free downloadable
ebooks.

Hart came up with the idea of making
works in the public domain available on a wide-scale basis and
started by entering the text of the Declaration
of Independence on the University’s mainframe computer. (To read more about
Hart, who died recently, see the New York Times obituary or the one on the Project Gutenberg site.) For the next 17 years Hart worked largely on
his own, typing in the text from more than 300 books. At that point, he started recruiting volunteers to add to the Project’s holdings. Today, most of
the books on Project Gutenberg are scanned from printed copies and proofread by
volunteers. Interested in helping? Go here to learn more.

Johann Gutenberg (c.1398-1468), the namesake of Project Gutenberg,
known as the inventor of movable type, a development that changed the
history of publishing forever.

You can view a copy of the Gutenberg bible, the book most famously associated with Johann Gutenberg, at this site maintained by the British Library.

What’s it like to browse through a
digital library? It’s less colorful and requires a little more patience than
strolling through the stacks at your local bricks-and-mortar library or
bookstore. And it’s probably best-suited to those with an interest in older
works (dating back about 100 years*)-- but some booklovers will find it well
worthwhile. Look up Lewis Carroll, for example, and you’ll find not only Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in
English, French and German, but some lesser-known works by Carroll such as the Hunting of the Snark, a nonsense poem (subtitled An Agony in Eight Fits) that borrows some of the language that first appeared in The Jabberwocky.

Among those titles most recently added
to the Project Gutenberg collection are:

Judith
Shakespeare, Her Love Affairs and other Adventures by William
Black (published circa 1890), a fictionalized biography of William
Shakespeare’s daughter, which begins,

“It was a fair, clear, and
shining morning, in the sweet May-time of the

year, when a young English
damsel went forth from the town of

Stratford-upon-Avon to walk
in the fields. As she passed along by the

Guild Chapel and the Grammar
School, this one and the other that met her

gave her a kindly greeting;
for nearly every one knew her, and she was a

favorite; and she returned
those salutations with a frankness which

betokened rather the self-possession
of a young woman than the timidity

of a girl. Indeed, she was
no longer in the first sensitive dawn of

maidenhood—“

From Judith Shakespeare, Her Loves and Other Adventures. Based on the (perhaps not completely reliable) information that is available about Judith's life, she was not destined for a happy ending, outliving both her philandering husband and her children.

Those with an interest in how India
was viewed by a Dubliner when Great Britain still ruled the country, might want to try Life in an Indian Outpost by Gordon
Casserly (the author of The Jungle Girl, also available on Project Gutenberg), published circa 1914. The book
reads like an adventure story (though one imagines it may well reflect an uncomfortable imperialist view) and begins,

“Against the blue sky to the
north lay a dark blur that, as our troop

train ran on through the level
plains of Eastern Bengal, rose ever

higher and took shape--the
distant line of the Himalayas.”

Unfortunately, the book’s 30-some illustrations
are not included, but the list of captions is and we are left to imagine the
depictions of the author’s “Bachelor
Establishment” and “A kneeling elephant.”

Most of the books on Project Gutenberg
are published in English and U.S. copyright laws apply. A note on the site
reminds users:

Our ebooks are free in the United States because their copyright
has expired. They may not be free of copyright in other countries. Readers
outside of the United States must check the copyright laws of their countries
before downloading or redistributing our ebooks.

For more
general information on Project Gutenberg, visit their FAQ page.

For links to other family-friendly sites
(including at least one that features children’s fiction from around the world)
where you can access free books on-line, visit this page from About.Com.

* The time at which a work enters the public domain varies widely, depending on
what year the work was published, where it was published, and the date of the
author’s death, among many other considerations. This site at Cornell University offers more detailed information.